Day 20 - Bora Bora, French Polynesia

Woke up to a gray sky and whitecaps, with rain predicted. Raisin bran and orange juice in the cabin followed by a mocha. About 8:00 the ship entered Povaie Bay through a narrow opening in the reef and at 8:52 anchors were dropped. If your cabin is forward like ours the anchor and what seems like miles of chain make a lot of noise.

Every evening we get the Princess Patter, which is the ship's newspaper. Not much use in it except for limited information on the next port/island. Today's tidbit is that there is no B in the Tahitian language and that Bora Bora should really be pronounced Pora Pora. It means First Born.

From where we where anchored we could see a resort with the grass roofed accommodations out over the water. With glass floors to see the water below, they run from $300 to over $1,000 a night. Count us in for a couple of hours.

Our excursion was to start at 12:30, so about 11:0 we headed down to catch a tender. Well, today they were handing out numbers to everyone and that number would determine when we went ashore. No problem thought I, except our number was 1,257 and they were loading 767. So I showed our excursion tickets to the officer passing people onto the tender and asked if we would make it. He let us go.

By getting that free pass we were about an hour early and that gave us time to look around the shops. Pearls. Pearls everywhere. Alaska is diamonds. Mexico/South America is emeralds. South Pacific is pearls. French Polynesia is famous for the its black pearls, which Barb will have no part of. How did I get so lucky.

The excursion was good. The tour guide was excellent. He attended high school in Richmond, California, caught a ship out of Coos Bay, Oregon in 1967 carrying lumber to French Polynesia, jumped ship in Tahiti and never looked back.

Our tour started aboard a colorfully painted "Le Truck" in the town of Valtape and wound clockwise around the island. All 22 miles. It's not a big island, but it has a number of those really neat hotels with bungalows out over the water, old deserted military installations, coconut plantations and some great beaches. The water is absolutely beautiful. It's hard to describe just how beautiful. Miles and miles of turquoise water and white sandy beaches. Our last stop was Bloody Mary's and yes I had one. We had a late lunch in town, which included a dark beer brewed in Tahiti by Hinano, before returning to the ship.

Tomorrow is Moorea.

Need to stay here someday

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Aboard the Crown Princess

016° 30' South
151° 46' West

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